Yet another
U.S. nation-building venture appears to be on the brink of failure. Earlier this month, Taliban forces overran
much of the northern Afghan city of Kunduz.
Although government troops eventually retook most of the city, they were
able to do so only with substantial assistance from the U.S. combat units still
in the country.

General John
Campbell, the U.S. commander, then urged President Obama to delay the planned
withdrawal of the remaining 9,800 American troops and to keep a permanent
garrison that is much larger than the president’s original plan for 1,000 military
personnel, mostly operating out of the U.S. embassy in Kabul. The president has now unwisely complied with
that request, deciding to keep at least 5,500 troops past the original 2016
deadline. As I argue in a new article in the National Interest Online,
Afghanistan threatens to become an endless nation-building quagmire for
Washington.

Senator Rand
Paul (R-KY) has asked the question that occurs to many Americans: why are we
still in Afghanistan more than 14 years after the initial invasion in response
to the Taliban regime’s decision to shelter al Qaeda? There is almost no al Qaeda presence in that
country any longer, and U.S. forces killed Osama Bin Laden more than four years
ago. Yet Washington continues to cite an
alleged need to prop-up the Kabul government against the Taliban. Senator Paul is absolutely correct that it is
well past time for anti-Taliban Afghans to step up and defend their own country
without relying on the United States.

Unfortunately,
what is happening in Afghanistan is typical of the results of U.S. foreign
policy initiatives over the past half century.
U.S. administrations seem to have a knack for picking corrupt,
unmotivated foreign clients who crumble in the face of determined domestic
adversaries. The Obama administration’s
fiasco of trying to train a cadre of “moderate” Syrian rebels to counter both
Bashar al-Assad’s regime and ISIS is only the most recent example. Despite spending more than $400 million, the
scheme produced only a handful of trainees—many of whom defected to ISIS or at
least turned over many of their weapons to the terrorist group or to al Nusra,
the al Qaeda affiliate in Syria. That embarrassing training debacle, now wisely
abandoned by the Obama administration, may well set a new record for expensive,
ineffectual government boondoggles.

The events in
Syria, though, were similar to the earlier fiasco next door in Iraq. The United States spent a decade training and
equipping a new Iraqi army at great expense (more than $25 billion) to American
taxpayers. Yet when ISIS launched its offensive last year to capture Mosul and
other cities, Iraqi troops seemed intent on setting speed records to flee their
positions and let the insurgents take over with barely a struggle. ISIS captured vast quantities of
sophisticated military hardware that Baghdad’s troops abandoned in their haste.

That episode
was reminiscent of the pathetic performance of the U.S.-backed ARVN—South
Vietnam’s so-called army–in early 1975.
Although the Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon administrations had waged a
bloody war against both South Vietnamese communist insurgents and North Vietnam
for more than a decade, which cost over 58,000 American lives, the results were
dismal. President Nixon’s Vietnamization
program—training and equipping the ARVN and gradually transferring
responsibility for the war effort to the South Vietnamese government–was a
total failure. When North Vietnam
launched a major offensive in early 1975, the collapse of the ARVN was
shockingly rapid and complete. Indeed,
it occurred so fast that the U.S. embassy in Saigon was barely able to evacuate
its diplomatic personnel before North Vietnamese troops captured the city.

These and
other incidents confirm that U.S. leaders habitually choose foreign clients
that are utterly inept. They are
characterized by thin domestic support, poor organization, and terrible
morale. Their domestic adversaries
always seem to be better organized, more competent, and far more
dedicated. Given the extent of the
failures in so many different arenas, Washington should realize that lavishing
funds on preferred clients cannot make them credible political and military
players in their countries. And
continuing to backstop such inept clients with U.S. troops merely wastes
American lives. Unfortunately, it
appears that we are on the verge of being taught that lesson yet again—this
time in Afghanistan.

About The Author:

Ted Galen Carpenter is senior fellow for defense and foreign policy studies at the Cato
Institute. Dr. Carpenter served as Cato’s director of foreign policy studies
from 1986 to 1995 and as vice president for defense and foreign policy studies
from 1995 to 2011.

Carpenter is
contributing editor to the National Interest and serves on the editorial boards
of Mediterranean Quarterly and the Journal of Strategic Studies, and is the
author of more than 600 articles and policy studies. His articles have appeared
in the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, the Los
Angeles Times, the Financial Times, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, the
National Interest, World Policy Journal, and many other publications. He is a
frequent guest on radio and television programs in the United States, Latin
America, Europe, East Asia, and other regions.

Carpenter
received his Ph.D. in U.S. diplomatic history from the University of Texas.

This article was first published at CATO @ Liberty on October 17, 2015. All Rights are reserved by the Original Publisher